Stand Up Blog

The effects of the financial and economic crises have a very real human face as they threaten to wipe away much of the progress made in developing counties toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a historic effort to end extreme poverty and hunger, improve access to education and health care, empower women, protect the environment, and create a partnership between rich and poor

In 2006, 23 million people Stood Up. In 2007, 47 million people Stood Up. Last year, 116 million people Stood Up and Took Action.

Let’s break the record again this year and send a louder message than ever – achieve the Millennium Developments

Why Stand Up and Take Action in 2009?

After some frantic counting, recounting and verifying, we finally have the figures for how many people took part in Stand Up and Take Action 2008.

The worldwide number is… 116,993,629. That’s almost 2% of the total world population!

Here’s how the figures break down:

Africa: 24,496,151
Arab region: 17,847,870
Asia: 73,151,847
Europe: 951,788
Latin America: 211,250
North America: 123,920
Oceania: 210,803

More people than ever before joined the fight against poverty and inequality and for the Millennium Development Goals during last weekend.

Their actions demonstrate that we can be the generation to end poverty.

There have been marches, rallies, free meals, office parties, tree-planting actions, medical checkups, concerts, football matches and all manner of different actions across the big wide world...

One of the most inspiring things about Stand Up and Take Action is feeling that we’re all in it, people of different economic means, races, beliefs and also people of all ages.

Here’s one of the stories we got in the mail, from Simon N. Kingari, from the KenyaKids Project in the Kawangware Slum in Nairobi, Kenya:

Everybody is Standing Up, even Big Brother contestants. In the Big Brother Africa house. During the past week, the contestants have been learning about Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals and have completed tasks related to Stand Up and Take Action.

Watch videos from the house at http://www.mnetafrica.com/bigbrother/Article.aspx?id=782

Throughout the day, the number of Stand Up and Take Action events recorded on the web site has been growing and the range of events is really powerful. As the day unfolded, there were marches in India and South Africa (with a little bit of rain along the way), a Stand Up in a train station in the UK, rallies in Pakistan, prayers in Mosques across Ghana and many, many more.

The beauty of the time-zone difference dilemma is that sometimes you wake up to a whole flurry of activity that has already taken place. Today, we logged on to the website to find a lot of event organisers from Oceania and Asia have already submitted their numbers, and more and more are coming in every hour.